Custard house
Saturday, 19 July, 2008
Monday 23/6/08
It was very hard to get up at 6:15. I managed 6:30. I also read my Bible over breakfast and prayed. I was in at work at 7:30 but the prime parking spots were already taken. It annoyed me; where did all those cars come from, and why was I having this problem now and not six months ago? Where did that rubbish come from—that roll of carpet and those tins of paint??? I know it's ridiculous that such little things should cause me such stress but they do. I suppose it's an indication of how full my stress cup is.
At work, I dealt with email and Sola Panel things, then a few Faithful Writer things. It felt like fighting foo, and then it all cleared up just before lunch. I started switching gears (which is a bit hard to do) and tried to get into reading/writing things—working on my children of divorce article. I needed Post-It flags so I went for a walk to the newsagency. They were all out so I went a bit further down the road to Kare Bear, the crazy Asian shop full of stuffed toys and imitation Hello Kitty. They had some for $3.00 so I bought them and went back. I had lunch around 12:30. Elsie showed up early. We read the Bible and prayed together. In the afternoon, I read some more and blogged about the consolation of psychology.
I left at four and went straight to the shops to the Asian supermarket and to Woolworths. I got another 25kg bag of rice. My shopping trolley ended up packed to the brim—so much so that the cashier asked if I was shopping for work or if I had kids. I explained that I only do the supermarket shopping once a month. She still seemed to think I was a bit of a nutter.
Back at home, Ben helped me carry it all up the stairs. I made rogan josh chicken for dinner with microwaved pappadams, steamed carrots and broccoli. Finally I got to sit down! We watched last week's TV—Numb3rs, new Futurama (which made me laugh uproariously; I'd forgotten how much I like Futurama and how clever it is), Law & Order: SVU, and then an episode of Lost Season 1 (I'm still not very into it). I wound yarn into balls to prepare for my next knitting project. Then we went to bed around 10:30/11:00 pm after I read a bit of The Ultimates (borrowed from Fish).
Tuesday 24/6/08
It was harder to get up at 6 but I did and had a shower. I took breakfast to work with me but didn't eat it; I downed about a litre of water instead. Then I started work—dealt with my email and The Sola Panel. I went to get a blood test done which took half an hour (it's to see if the cholesterol meds are having any effect). Back in the office, I kept dealing with the foo and finally got back into reading for my article. I had lunch at 1 (over more reading), and then I got sick of reading and decided to blog about the books I was reading.
I left at 4. The traffic was horrendous on Canal Road; I think this was the day that a car collided with a semitrailer which was blocking most of the road. The cars were slowly moving around it. I wasn't sure what to do so I did what everyone else in front of me was doing—mounting the median strip, manouevring around the traffic light and the semitrailer and then continuing on.
I started the laundry as soon as I got home and dealt with some computer things. Then we went out to Newtown to have dinner with Tho and Sarah (who was in the country for her sister's wedding). We ate at Viet in Newtown (quite nice!) and then went out for gelato for dessert (I decided not to have any). Ynping called me at that moment to talk about the Olympic party she and other school friends were planning (they want to go away for it). So I was antisocial for a while while talking to her. We dropped Sarah home and then came home ourselves. I finished off the laundry—changed and washed the sheets—finished my book blog post and went to bed.
Wednesday 25/6/08
Ben and I slept in a little and, at my suggestion, caught the 9:38 train and went to the Customs House Library to work. Strangely enough, it all came together and I managed to hammer out the first draft of my Salt article (and a good thing too; it was due in less than a week).
We had lunch at Wagamama and then Ben went home. I walked to Pitt Street mall and spent around $70 at Lincraft on yarn for making stuff (see my previous post on my yarn stash). I wandered around for a bit—I went to JB Hi Fi and found that Jane Austen DVD with Emma, Northanger Abbey and Mansfield Park. I also bought a birthday present for Peter (but it turned out that he already had it).
On my way through to Town Hall station, I met Lachlan and got to chat with him for a while before we both had to go. I went past Kathmandu who were having a sale but even on sale they were expensive. I then walked to Chinatown and found a Morning Glory shop because I was all out of Asian pens (these were $2 each instead of $1 like at Artbox). I also found some more Post-It flags.
Then I caught the bus to Newtown. I was early so I sat in the dog park for an hour in the sunshine, and knitted the Tuttifrutti scarf while thinking and praying. I met Sarah T at Campos but it was shut, so we walked to Cinque and I had a banana and hazelnut smoothie (I love hazelnut).
We both caught the train home. We ate leftovers for dinner, then watched TV all evening. I also felted the Booga Bag and was delighted with the results.
Thursday 26/6/08
I had a bad day today. We were in at work later than planned, and I was stressed and cranky. My computer was being slow and stupid, and then it crashed in the middle of installing a Microsoft Office update and while I was IM-ing with Guan and Bec, trying to convince them to come out for dumplings. When I restarted my Mac, I discovered I had lost Microsoft Word. This wasn't too good considering 90% of my work is done with Microsoft Word.
This wouldn't have been a problem but I couldn't find the right installation disks. I asked Ian. He didn't know. I asked Liza. She didn't know. No one knew. So I had to ring Simon (who had recently left us) but his phone wasn't answering. I left a message and went to lunch with Ben, Bec and Guan (dumplings! honey chicken! waa!) After lunch, I kept hunting for the discs. I was really upset about it because I wasn't getting any work done and I wanted to, plus I was experiencing echoing abandonment issues (blah blah blah—divorce—blah blah blah ...). I was still upset during prayer and Bible study, and when Ben left to go to counselling. Then I discovered that when I was out, Simon had called and left a message with Emma who had passed the phone message on via email as to the location of the installation disks. But because I wasn't checking my email (having shut down and re-started my computer several times to do various things), I hadn't gotten the message. So now I finally had the disks, and I spent the rest of the afternoon reinstalling Microsoft Word, along with all the security updates to fix the bugs. By the end of the day, I was completely fed up, and there wasn't any time left to do anything constructive on my article, so I spent the rest of it working on Sola Panel things.
Ben came to get me and we went home, and I made a vegetable stir fry with fish tofu. We watched some TV and then Ben went out to see Jono's band play at the Annandale pub. (I would have gone too but I was exhausted so I stayed home.)
Friday 27/6/08
We were in at work around 9 or 10—I forget when. It was a better day for me: I dealt with email and Sola Panel things, did some problem solving for Faithful Writer stuff, and I read for a bit. I spent the last hour of my afternoon working on my Salt article—polishing it and marking it up into HTML. I finished that last bit at home when Ben came to pick me up.
Then we went into Newtown to meet Dave and Luke at Cinque. It took us ages to find a park: Newtown on a Friday night is ridiculous. We ended up parking beind the dog park and were the first ones there. We got ourselves a table and then Dave showed up, surprised to see me (I only decided at the last minute to come). Dinner at Cinque was yummy (I think I had the risotto). Luke arrived but had already eaten so he had dessert. Then we got our tickets for Mongol at the Dendy and went in to see it. I was impressed with its beauty but also a bit frustrated with the unbelievable bits (e.g. one moment he's in the stocks, the next he's free with no explanation given whatsoever).
Afterwards, Ben dropped me home and then dropped Dave home. I read the rest of The Ultimates and went to bed.
Saturday 28/6/08
Ben left at an absurdly early hour to go canyoning in the Blue Mountains as part of Elwin's buck's party. I had a very long sleep in, got up, had a shower and walked to the video store and hired out four DVDs: P.S. I Love You, No Reservations, The Nanny Diaries and Ella Enchanted. It was all part of the “What's something nice that you can do for yourself this week?” prescription from George the previous Sunday. (“I don't want to do anything,” I said. “I want to knit and watch DVDs.” “So why don't you do that?” said George. “Because it's a waste of a day, and it's such nice weather outside, surely I should go out and do some exercise or something.” “Rubbish!” said George [or words to that effect].)
I walked home from the video store. It was hotter than I expected—must have been a warm front. I had leftovers for lunch and read my RSS feeds, dealt with email and Facebook, blogged, had leftovers for dinner and settled down for my night in—on the armchair in the study in front of Elwin and Felicity's ginormous TV.
Then I discovered why hiring DVDs is annoying: they skip. Somehow three of the four DVDs I borrowed had scratches on them, so every now and then the picture would freeze and skip ahead one scene, and I would fiddle with the remote to try and get it back to where it was supposed to be—or as close to the place where it skipped as I could get it—and No Reservations drove me near crazy because it skipped so much, I swear I missed half the movie, including the crucial climactic scene at the end. That evening, I ended up watching P.S. I Love You (which I loved and which made me cry, and how gorgeous were those shoes she designed!), as much of No Reservations as I could get and The Nanny Diaries, plus all special features. I knitted and ripped out almost an entire Urchin hat because I stuffed up the pattern. I finished the hat at 4 am and then went to bed.
Sunday 29/6/08
I slept in until 11:30 and then had a shower and breakfast. Ben came home—yay! We drove to Naomi's parents' house for her baby shower. The boys went out with Simon and the girls stayed in and did baby shower-type games. I'd never been to a baby shower before (and certainly not a baby shower when the baby had already been born) so it was interesting (and nice to catch up with Erin L and others). I managed to elude the baby food game but I did make a washer for little Jasper to use (not sure if that's a standard baby shower activity but it was fun! I drew my snow man on it). At around 4 Ben and I left and drove straight to Wild Street where we heard another excellent sermon from Kurt. It really comforted me by reminding me that GOd is in control of his world.
We didn't stay for dinner because Ben was rather tired (and so was I). I drove us home and made us spaghetti bolognaise for dinner (Ben needed to have a lie down so we ate in bed). Then I did the dishes and went on the internet to work on the editing seminar Bec and I are doing for The Faithful Writer, and spent a couple of hours going through the archives of Neil Gaiman's blog, looking for this (it was here). I also did some Sola Panel things and went to bed at 11:30.
Blinks:
A way of funding writing in the future: pitch and idea and get people to support it.
Place where you can hire play equipment for parties, etc.
How to recalibrate the home button on your iPhone.
Unsolicited manuscripts accepted by Pan Macmillan with certain conditions.
Thought Balloon is a group blog in which the writers tackle a new theme every week? month? with one-page scripts. This URL is for their Phonogram ones.
How to sew a zipper on a knitted garment.
Issues organised by tale.
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